Mary Ellen Solt, née Bottom (July 8, 1920 in

Gilmore City, Iowa Gilmore City is a city in Humboldt County, Iowa, Humboldt and Pocahontas County, Iowa, Pocahontas counties in the U.S. state of Iowa. The population was 487 at the time of the United States Census, 2020, 2020 census. History Gilmore City was plat ...

– June 21, 2007) was an American

concrete poet Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct mea ...

, essayist, translator, editor, and professor. Her work was most notably poems in the shape of flowers such as "

Forsythia ''Forsythia'' , is a genus of flowering plants in the olive family Oleaceae. There are about 11 species, mostly native to Eastern Asia, but one native to Southeastern Europe. ''Forsythia'' – also one of the plant's common names – is named ...

", "

Lilac ''Syringa'' is a genus of 12 currently recognized species of flowering woody plants in the olive family or Oleaceae called lilacs. These lilacs are native to woodland and scrub from southeastern Europe to eastern Asia, and widely and commonly ...

", and "

Geranium ''Geranium'' is a genus of 422 species of annual, biennial, and perennial plants that are commonly known as geraniums or cranesbills. They are found throughout the temperate regions of the world and the mountains of the tropics, with the gre ...

". They were collected in ''Flowers in Concrete'' (1966). In 1968 Solt edited the groundbreaking and historically significant anthology ''Concrete Poetry: A World View'', which the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' wrote was "considered one of the major anthologies of the form." In Concrete Poetry : A World View, she collected, translated, introduced, and contextualizing the global movement of concrete poetry that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s : the first international literary movement. Solt is the subject of issue #51 of the Swedish journal OEI. The issue is entitled, "Mary Ellen Solt – Toward a theory of concrete poetry." She married Leo Frank Solt, who was a historian, with books on old and early modern English history and

Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should b ...

ism. They both taught at

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a state university system, system of Public university, public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. The system has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration o ...

and she was also director of the Polish Studies Center. Solt's personal papers are held by the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

Selected publications

;Editor *"Concrete Poetry: A World View," Indiana University Press, 1970 ;Poetry *''Flowers in Concrete,'' Design Program, Fine Arts Dept., Indiana University, 1966

References

External links

Poems
at

UbuWeb UbuWeb is a "a pirate shadow library consisting of hundreds of thousands of freely downloadable avant-garde artifacts." It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives. The site was created by ...

''Concrete Poetry: A World View''
at UbuWeb 1920 births 2007 deaths 20th-century American educators People from Humboldt County, Iowa American women poets 20th-century American poets 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women {{US-poet-1920s-stub